The Election Commission would conduct a mock election in 175 polling booths in five states across India to test prototype Voter Verifiable Paper Trail (VVPT) systems, an official said Wednesday. VVPT is a prototype of the present Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) fitted with a printing apparatus where a voter would be able to see the candidate to whom he or she has cast his vote. However, the voter will not get copy of the paper receipt.The Election Commission has approved the VVPT which was developed by Bharat Electrical Limited (BEL) and Electronic Corporation of India (ECIL). “This new machine which will supplement the existing electronic voting machines would be tested during the simulated elections to be held in five districts in five states across India on July 24,” Meghalaya’s chief electoral officer Prashant Naik said.The five districts selected for the mock elections include Ladakh district of Jammu and Kashmir, Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Cherrapunjee in Meghalaya, East Delhi in Delhi and Jaisalmer. “These five areas were selected because of the extreme weather conditions and we wanted to get an effective assessment on these new machines,” Naik said. He said the decision to experiment the VVPT was taken after the Commission’s meeting with all political parties in October last year and repeated allegations that EVMs are being tampered to manipulate election results.The election commission then referred the matter to the Technical Expert Committee on EVM for further examination and recommendations. In fact, various political parties in the country, have been demanding that the VVPT system be introduced for conduct of “free and fair elections” in the country. The results of these simulated elections would be declared on July 25.